Saturday, February 03, 2007 Roperos: School in the wilderness By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
WHERE before there was only a cornfield, coconut trees and the Siamong creek nearby, and once upon a time, the setting of mostly childhood stories in my book called the “The Bald Mountains,” there stands now a low two-level school building, with four rooms in each level, serving as branch of Cebu Normal University (CNU) in my hometown, Balamban. It is, if you ask me, a modest effort of the town’s leadership to bring higher education to our poor but deserving youth. It is a unique but highly fulfilling project for our town.
There are still fewer than 100 students, most of them taking up an education course. It began last year, its first site a mountain area far up in the hills. But due to the absence of easy accessibility and lack of security, the school, which was born out of an agreement between our town’s Mayor Alex Binghay and CNU president Dr. Esther Velasquez, was moved to its current site.
The school’s present site used to be part of my great-grandfather Blas Gilamon’s farm. Its new owner, Ms. Alice Moudgill, turned it into a kind of resort called the Quail’s Hollow.
But Ms. Moudgill has agreed, out of the kindness of her balikbayan heart, to donate the building and campus to the school. The school’s budget for operation, of course, is taken care of by the Municipal Government. It can afford to do so because my town has become a developing industrial community with its two growing shipbuilding operations in full swing, one for fast crafts and the other, for ocean-going vessels. In fact, Balamban has now four savings/commercial banks and three big cooperatives.
It is a town that truly deserves a college-level institution to serve our youth who are financially unable to come to the city for further training. For skills needed by shipbuiling companies, the Don Bosco Technical School has opened a training facility in the town to provide welders, fitters, plumbers, etc. the shipbuilders need. This is a “hot commodity” since there appears to be a fast turnover of experienced technical men who are surreptitiously recruited for employment abroad.
But this is not really the point I wish to write about here. It is about Sitio Siamong in Prenza, the site of the CNU branch. In my short stories about my childhood, Siamong looms big because it was where we lived during World War II, and where I learned to climb coconut trees to gather tuba, to ride horses, and to witness birth and death, which have become materials of my tales. Even the flood and the torment farmers go through as they watch their corn crops overwhelmed by waters from the Siamong creek.
It was in my grandfather’s small farm where he planted corn, tobacco, sweet potatoes and mongo and peanuts, all lumped up in an area less than two hectares, that I learned how to love to eat native onions dipped in vinegar as viand for lunch paired with corn grits. And boiled malunggay soup with ginger together with salted fish or broiled dried fish for dinner. It was a life I still consider idyllic, committed deep in memory, and nourished as part of growing up. Perhaps, it was endeared because I knew no other life then.
Who would ever think that what was once wilderness more than half a century ago would now become not only the site of a resort, but also of a developing university. Of course, the latter, while growing, would need the support not only of the Municipal Government but also of the good people of the town whose resources are more than what the comforts of their life demand. But as of now, it is already a symbol of the vision of the present leadership, and a landmark of their public service.
